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M: Yes. Most of them use oak chips and things,that's fine.
K: I know that agricultural extension service had a great deal to do with
developing new farming techniques. Did you have any difficulty intro-
ducing these to local farmers?
M: Yes. I can give you an example of several examples when we were running
those terraces. Now, when I went to Bonifay, we got a law passed. I can
give the history of it. We had wall nothings in the government farming
camps, just like a C.C. camp, and they didn't have anything to do and
were starving to death, so to farm these camps, Mr. Bennett, from Green-
ville, South Carolina, sold the government on this soil conservation.
The earth was washing away. Well, that's where the soil conservation
came in, as me, Dr. Berra, a banker, Mr. Miller, a local merchant, and a
few others went down and got the legislature. There's a few other
counties come in, but we were more interested in it, because the govern-
ment had put the camp at Graceville, right across the county line, from
Holmes County. That was in Jackson. But they wanted the majority of the
land to take our county, that was my county, Holmes County, see. That was
a small county. Jackson was a large county.
It had been farmed before the Civil War. But Holmes County was fairly
young, less than, I'd say, fifty years some of the old land, some of them
about thirty. When the mills closed and cut out in the thirties, a little
before, and the turpentine went out, they started farming. They figured that
if they could get in there and terrace they could hold that land. Well, we
got the bill passed, they looked at these terraces and said that's too much
land. They made a broad terrace, and you just plow it out. You go up the
hill this way,and then up the terrace this way. But it was broad, and you
could just farm right over it. You'd farm with the contour, but I mean you
could use it. The old way they had, we called them tater ridges. They just
put them straight up, and if the water broke, it was too bad. They didn't
run the lines and didn't know nothing about the elevation, but they did
pretty good,considering.
Well, we got it passed, and I'd run these lines, and they'd come out and
they'd argue with me, and say, "Well, those things going uphill, man, water
won't run that way." I said, "It's not going uphill." I said, "I started
off back yonder at the middle, and I am going to divide it." I'd say, "I ran
a hundred feet on a level. I ran another hundred feet on a quarter. Another
on a half. Another on three-quarters. Another on an inch." I'd say, "I run
it. I would never drop it over two-and-a-half, you start over here at a
quarter, that's why they dropped.
So, they would come out, bogged down in the mud, to see the water run up
the hill, and they'd come in and say, "Well, the fool made it run up the
hill." I'd say, "I didn't do such a damn thing," and I carried them back out
there, and I had several of them that saw a rain come up, and I carried them
out there and showed them. Well, they says, it's going :uphill. And I said,
"Come on over here." They said, "It's going downhill here." I carried them
over to another part of the field. I said, "I told you it's going downhill
all the time. It's just the way you are looking at it." I think it ran at
1750 feet field maximum this way and this way dividing. And then you had
your ditches, and we started the ditches, and we'd have to use wire and pin